Before and After Reading activities

1. 1, 2, 3…
1, 2, 3…

2. Testing…
Testing…

3. OK!

4. Top Reading Activities
Robert Hill

5. BEFORE-READING ACTIVITIES
Good readers make predictions.
Make students ‘hungry’ to read.
Top-down processing, and not
bottom-up processing.

6. Encouraging learners to predict
a) Extract a significant sentence from
the text and ask ‘What do you think
happens to lead up to this?’
The sentence can be from anywhere
in the text. e.g.
‘He looked at the prince with his big ,
brown eyes, trying to tell him
something, but the prince was very
angry.’

7. Encouraging learners to predict
b) Write some significant words or
phrases on the board. Learners
predict how they might occur. e.g.
• a prince
• his wife
• his son
• a dog
• a wolf
Write a one- or two-sentence story
using all the words. Give a time
constraint (e.g. 3 minutes).

8. The prince, His dog,
Llewelyn Gelert
baby
hunt
wolf
grave
kill

10. The Welsh story of Gelert
His grave in the
village of
Beddgelert in north
Wales (a legend!)
()
L

17. Encouraging learners to predict
d) ‘Who says it?’
(which makes you think of why they say
it, too)
‘Who said it?’ for after-reading:
comprehension and characterisation
Language work in the gap-fill (some
bottom-up processing)

21. The ‘Myth’ of Sherlock Holmes
In 1893, Conan Doyle decided to end
the Holmes series with his death in
The Final Problem.
But more than 20,000 readers stopped
reading The Strand magazine.
And readers in black arm bands stood
outside his home in London.
In 1901-02 Doyle wrote another
Holmes story (set before Holmes’s
death in The Final Problem), called…

23. The ‘Myth’ of Sherlock Holmes
In a further collection of 13 stories,
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
(1903-04), Conan Doyle describes
how Holmes escaped alive from the
encounter with Professor Moriarty at
the Reichenbach Falls.

28. The ‘Myth’ of Sherlock Holmes
American actor William Gillette first
played Holmes on stage in 1892.
He introduced:
- the Meerschaum pipe
- the deerstalker hat
- “Elementary, my dear fellow”
Basil Rathbone in The Hound of the
Baskervilles (1939) and 13 more films
introduced the Inverness cape

29. Dozens of actors have played Holmes on
film, TV, stage and radio:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_actors_wh

35. According to Sir Ian McKellen…
“Our notion of what Sherlock
Holmes is comes not from the
novels, but from everything that’s
happened since.
There are all these versions of
Sherlock Holmes, and they all add
up to an impression we have.”

36. Which actor or illustration
- is closest to / farthest from the
description in the text?
(despite Ian McKellen’s comments)
- is closest to / farthest from your
personal idea of the character?
Can you improve on the character’s
appearance?

37. 1865-2015: 150-Year Anniversary1865-2015: 150-Year Anniversary

51. 1865-2015: 150-Year Anniversary1865-2015: 150-Year Anniversary
Sir John Tenniel’s illustrations in an
edition of 1865
http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/gallery/2015/jul/04/alice-in-wonderl

52. Appearance (or Looks)
element of Indirect Characterisation
(i.e. ‘showing’, not telling’)
The STEAL acronym
Speech (what the character says)
Thoughts (what the character thinks)
Effects on other characters
Actions (what the character does)
Looks (appearance, and ‘accessories’)

53. STEAL
Speech: ‘Who says / said it?’
(choosing most representative lines)
Thoughts: ‘Thought tracking’ (students
imagine what characters are thinking
at a particular moment) (or pictures)
Effects: Writing in role from different
povs (points of view) (later)
Actions: Diaries, confessions (later)
Looks: Web search (e.g. Holmes, Alice)

54. Reading Diary
in the Guide to Graded Readers on
the English Catalogue page of the
Black Cat website.

55. Writing in role
• Letters & notes to friends / relatives
(while reading)
• Diary entries (while reading)
• Final declaration – even a confession
– to another character in the story, to
posterity, to the reader (after reading)

56. Writing in role
• Constraints in Cambridge writing
tasks: Key 25-35 words; Preliminary
about 100 words; First 140-190 words
• Contemporary communication: text
messages (160 characters) & tweets
(140 characters)

58. Main characters &
Minor characters
A post-modern trend is giving a
voice to characters without a
voice in the original text

62. Teen Fiction (by Lisa Fiedler)

63. Some characters…
• Mr Rochester / Bertha Mason
• Count Dracula
• Heathcliff / Cathy / Edgar / Hindley
• Long John Silver
• Man Friday
• Mr Darcy (& other Jane Austen
characters)
• Shylock
• Iago

64. After-reading tasks with constraints
A mini-sagamini-saga - 50 words exactly.
Challenging!
A summarysummary – exact number of words.
e.g. 100 words (or 150, or 200)
With a summary, students can take
away words or add words.
This practises comprehension,
interpretation and language skills.
You can specify parts of speech.
Practice: summary of the Gelert story.

65. The shortest summary of all...
The Title

67. Full title of the 1719 edition
The Life and Strange Surprizing
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of
York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and
Twenty Years, all alone in an un-
inhabited Island on the Coast of
America, near the Mouth of the Great
River of Oroonoque; Having been cast
on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the
Men perished but himself. With An
Account how he was at last as
strangely deliver'd by Pyrates.

68. Titles with names in them…
But there is usually a constraint of
length on titles!
How many titles with names of
characters can you think of?
(In pairs. Time constraint: 10 seconds!)
(In fours. Time constraint: 10 seconds!)

82. Themes

87. Setting
(and therefore atmosphere)

91. Mystery

94. Symbolism (in titles by
modernist writers)

96. Allusion, quotation

98. Allusion & quotation
Allusion & quotation is more usual
in the 20th
century, e.g.
Far From the Madding Crowd
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Go Set A Watchman

99. Invent titles for these two stories
A and B on the handouts

100. A: Two greedy businessmen want to destroy a
beautiful wildlife reserve in New Orleans, where
Andy and Brian have summer jobs, and they plan
to build a huge shopping center. Mysterious and
terrible deaths, and an ecological disaster shock
the people of New Orleans. Andy, Brian and
Megan decide to solve this bizarre mystery, but
can they find the important document that will
save the wildlife reserve and its animals?
Suspense and danger run high as time runs out…
Set in one of America’s most unique cities, this is
a baffling mystery solved by three young
detectives, with an unexpected final twist.

101. B: Karen, Sally and Alex are three teenagers
who take a camping trip at Yellowstone
National Park during a wolf alert. Two of the
park’s wolves are missing and the three
teens decide to look for them. Their trip
becomes an exciting, yet dangerous
adventure when they meet a hungry grizzly
bear, an angry mountain lion and a herd of
bison that destroy their tent. Will they ever
solve the mystery of the missing wolves?

102. Explicit titles: wysiwyg

103. What you see is what you get

104. Less obvious titles
C, D & E on the handouts
a) Invent titles for them
b) Match the blurbs C, D & E to the
titles I will show you

105. C: Seren wants to go on a school trip to Paris
more than anything. But when her Dad
won’t even let her walk home from school
by herself, how is she going to convince
him? Determined not to give up on her
dream, Seren comes up with a plan. But
she quickly learns that even the best plans
can go wrong, and even the biggest dreams
can end up broken. She needs another plan
fast. But will it be good enough to convince
her Dad?

106. D: When a mysterious birthday present
arrives from somebody she doesn’t know,
Helen realises that there’s something
strange going on. With her cousin Will, she
discovers a terrifying secret which is
hundreds of years old and a curse which
has almost destroyed her family. It’s a race
against time to solve the mystery and stop
the curse, before it destroys them too.

107. E: Bella and her friends, Elise and Gracie, are
going on a school trip. But then they get lost.
They set out to find their school friends and the
youth hostel where they should be staying but
before they can find them, strange and spooky
things start to happen. First Bella sees a
mysterious girl in the woods, then Elise
witnesses a discussion between two men
which will reveal some dangerous secrets.
Their friends are unaware that they are in
danger and it is up to Elise, Bella and Gracie to
save them. But how?

109. Chapter Headings
• The strategies for inventing book
titles
• Epigraphs (quotations from inside the
chapter) are possible.
• Students – alone, in pairs or groups –
invent new chapter headings.
• Students say/write a new heading,
the rest of the class guess which
chapter it refers to.
• Class votes on best new headings.

110. ‘Visual’ Summaries
Film Posters

111. Some early posters tend to
show moments of
the plotthe plot

113. Other posters – & especially
recent ones – tend to show
the themethe theme

122. ‘Taglines’
‘My only love sprung from my only
hate’ (a quote from the play)
‘The most dangerous love story
ever told’

123. Posters
• Create a poster showing the major
theme(s) of the book
• Create a tagline, with or without a
poster
• We’re going to look at some posters
of Othello.
• ‘Salience’ (= prominence) and
interpretation of the story & theme
• Evaluation of posters

130. Top Activities
Robert Hill
robhill.vr@gmail.com

131. Competition in The Guardian
3 May 2001
1st PRIZE
txtin iz messin,
mi headn'me englis,
try2rite essays,
they all come out txtis.
gran not plsed w/letters shes getn,
swears i wrote better
b4 comin2uni.
&she's african

132. Competition in The Guardian
3 May 2001
4th PRIZE
Reunion
Slough Reading Didcot Parkway
my face flashes
between telegraph poles,
solemn as the passport photograph
no one recognises

133. Which Dickens novel is this?
Prove It
Stubborn Things
Something Tangible
Rust and Dust
Our Hard-Hearted Friend
Simple Arithmetic
A Matter of Calculation
Two and Two are Four
A Mere Question of Figures

134. Which Dickens novel is this?
According to Cocker
The Grindstone
The Gradgrind Philosophy
Mr Gradgrind’s Facts
Hard Times

135. A famous non-Shakespearean quote
“Love does not consist in gazing at
each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction.”
from Wind, Sand and Stars (French
title Terre des hommes), 1939, by
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

136. Next, a ‘retelling’

139. A
x
x
”)
M
M
M

140. An
‘x’
()
L

142. SCARTO

144. Encouraging learners to predict
x) Extract some significant sentences from
the text (from 3 to 6), write them on the
board in scrambled order, and ask the
class to suggest the order in which they
will occur (this will make learners think
about plot).
• E.g. Some sentences from today’s story
are:

145. Scrambled sentences from today’s story
(a) (…) When Prince Llewellyn heard the
baby crying his sword fell on the floor. He
was alive!
(b) (…) It was a long, terrible fight. But the
baby slept peacefully and did not wake
up.
(c) (…) ‘You’re safe with old Gelert. He’ll
look after you till I come back.’
(d) (…) ‘You killed my son – my only son!
And I trusted only you!’

146. Encouraging learners to predict
x) Extract a passage and eliminate some of
the words or phrases (gap-filling
procedure). This is a prediction activity, not
a language test, so eliminate words to do
with plot / character. Ss fill in the gaps &
then check their ideas when they read.
e.g. from today’s story: When Prince
Llewellyn heard the ........ crying his sword
fell on the floor. He was alive! He looked
around the room and saw a dead ........ in
a dark corner. Then he understood!

148. Character Building
Imagine a character’s:
• Hobbies and sports (to play and to
watch)
• Music. What does he/she listen to?
What instrument does he/she play?
• Favourite food & drink (mealtimes).
What does he/she cook?
• Habits
• Colours

149. Character Building
• Favourite clothes, accessories
• Habits
• Favourite possessions (What have
they got in their pockets, drawers,
‘dens’?)
• Home (house, flat) and furniture. How
is it decorated? Favourite room?
• Favourite books, films, paintings
• Favourite characters in fiction and film

150. Character Building
• Historical person they most admire
• Favourite place (city, town, village,
natural environment)
• A perfect day
• A perfect holiday
• Gifts they would like to receive
• Ambitions
• Ideas of yours…?
• For major or minor characters?

152. Backstories
• Create biographical factfiles for characters
• More elaborate texts than factfiles (e.g. on
fansites, e.g. Game of Thrones)
http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Characters
• Imagine what a character was like at a
certain age (e.g.10, 15, 20, 25 etc.)

153. New Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch

155. Backstories
• Prepare to interview the characters (create
questions), then conduct the interview
(answer the questions – written or oral)
• Most interesting backstory questions
might be about what made characters the
way they are

156. Character Building & Backstories
Choose a Shakespearian character. Can
you use any of the character building
ideas? Can you imagine any backstory?
-Hamlet; Ophelia; Claudius; Gertrude
-Macbeth; Lady Macbeth
-Othello; Desdemona; Iago
-Romeo; Juliet; their parents; the Nurse
-Shylock; Portia
-Prospero; Caliban
-Richard III; Henry V
-Julius Caesar; Brutus

157. Some characters…
• Count Dracula
• Heathcliff / Cathy / Edgar / Hindley
• Mr Kurtz (in Heart of Darkness)
• Miss Jessel & Peter Quint (in The
Turn of the Screw)
• Long John Silver
• Man Friday
• Mr Darcy (& other Jane Austen
characters)

158. Some characters…
• Dorian Gray / Lord Henry / Basil
• Captain Ahab / Queequeg
• Gatsby / Daisy / George & Myrtle
Wilson
• Mr Rochester / Bertha Mason
• Peter Pan, Wendy
• The children in The Railway Children
• The children in The Secret Garden
• The sisters in Little Women

165. The reader writes back…
…in role:
• as a friend
• as an ‘Agony Aunt’
• as a journalist, police officer, social
worker (change of audience)
• as a poet (acrostic poems, haikus)
• Can you think of any more?
• Reading Diary (See Black Cat
Readers Guide pages 38-41)